Jonah Goldberg commentary: Islamic State is the very definition of evil

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Friday August 29, 2014 5:20 AM

I never liked it when George W. Bush used the term
evildoers to describe al-Qaida and other terrorists. A lot of other people objected, as
well, but for different reasons. I didn’t like the term because it always sounded to me like he was
saying “evil Dewar’s,” as in the blended Scotch. (This always made some of Bush’s statements
chuckle-worthy — “We will not rest until we find the evil Dewar’s!”) I prefer single malts, but “
evil” always seemed unduly harsh.

The more common objection to
evildoers was that it was, variously, simplistic, Manichean, imperialistic, cartoonish,
etc.

“Perhaps without even realizing it,” Peter Roff, then with UPI, wrote in October 2001, “the
president is using language that recalls a simpler time when good and evil seemed more easy to
identify — a time when issues, television programs and movies were more black and white, not
colored by subtle hues of meaning.”

A few years later, as the memory of 9/11 faded and the animosity toward Bush grew, the criticism
became more biting. But the substance was basically the same. Sophisticated people don’t talk about
“evil,” save perhaps when it comes to America’s legacy of racism, homophobia, capitalistic greed
and the other usual targets of American self-loathing.

For most of the Obama years, talk of evil was largely banished from mainstream discourse. An
attitude of “goodbye to all that” prevailed, as the war on terror was rhetorically and legally
disassembled and the spare parts put toward building a law-enforcement operation. War was
euphemized into “overseas contingency operations” and “kinetic military action.” There was still
bloodshed, but the language often was bloodless. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a protege of al-Qaida guru
Anwar al-Awlaki, shouted “Allahu Akbar!” as he killed his colleagues at Fort Hood. The military
called the incident “workplace violence.”

But sanitizing the language works only so long as people aren’t paying too much attention. That’s
why the Islamic State is so inconvenient to those who hate the word
evil. Last week, after the group released a video showing American journalist James Foley
getting his head cut off, the administration’s rhetoric changed dramatically. The president called
the Islamic State a “cancer” that had to be eradicated. Secretary of State John Kerry referred to
it as the “face of … evil.”

Although most people across the ideological spectrum see no problem with calling Islamic State
evil, the change in rhetoric elicited a predictable knee-jerk response. Political scientist Michael
Boyle hears an “eerie echo” of Bush’s “evildoers” talk. “Indeed,” he wrote in
The New York Times, “condemning the black-clad, masked militants as purely ‘evil’ is
seductive, for it conveys a moral clarity and separates ourselves and our tactics from the enemy
and theirs.”

James Dawes, the director of the Program in Human Rights and Humanitarianism at Macalester
College, agreed in a piece for CNN.com. Using the word
evil, he wrote, “stops us from thinking.”

No, it doesn’t. But perhaps a reflexive and dogmatic fear of the word
evil hinders thinking?

For instance, Boyle suggests that because the Islamic State controls lots of territory and is “
administering social services,” it “operates less like a revolutionary terrorist movement that
wants to overturn the entire political order in the Middle East than a successful insurgent group
that wants a seat at that table.”

Behold the clarity of thought that comes with jettisoning moralistic language. Never mind that
the Islamic State says it seeks a global caliphate with its flag over the White House. Who cares
that it is administering social services? Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot did, too. That’s what
revolutionary groups do when they grab enough territory.

There’s a more fundamental question: Is it true? Is the Islamic State evil?

As a matter of objective moral fact, the answer seems obvious. But also under any
more-subjective version of multiculturalism, pluralism or moral relativism shy of nihilism,
evil seems a pretty accurate description for an organization that is not only intolerant
toward gays, Christians, atheists, moderate Muslims, Jews, women, et al. but also stones, beheads
and enslaves them.

Who are you saving the word for if
evil is too harsh for the Islamic State? More to the point, since when is telling the
truth evidence you’ve stopped thinking?